Director of National Intelligence Cut Jobs and Secrets in 2011
In a portent of spending cuts that are still to come, the number of employees at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) dropped significantly over the past year.
Interestingly, one of the first visible signs of the reduction in the workforce was a decline in the level of ODNI classification activity, which dropped by 17.3% from the year before.
“The decrease in total [classification] decisions was largely driven by a 12.9% decrease in population size from last year,” wrote ODNI Information Management chief John F. Hackett in a November 7, 2011 report to the Information Security Oversight Office. A copy was obtained by Secrecy News under the Freedom of Information Act.
A spokesman for ODNI public affairs said he could not immediately comment on the report, which may reflect a drop in staff as well as contractor personnel, both of which are authorized to generate classified information at ODNI.
A former ODNI official told Secrecy News that “hundreds” of ODNI jobs had been eliminated. He said that the size of the ODNI workforce was on the order of 2000 people, and that the loss of hundreds of positions was consistent with the reported 12.9% “decrease in population size.”
Most patient safety challenges are not really captured and there are not enough tools to empower clinicians to improve. Here are four proposals for improving patient safety that are worthy of attention and action.
The Trump administration has often cited consolidation as a path to efficiency. But history shows that USDA reorganizations have weakened, not strengthened, the agency’s capacity.
Grace Wickerson, the Federation of American Scientists’ Senior Manager, Climate and Health, today accepted a national recognition, the “Grist 50” award, bestowed by the editorial board of Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization.
The bootcamp brought more than two dozen next-generation open-source practitioners from across the United States to Washington DC, where they participated in interactive modules, group discussions, and hands-on sleuthing.